The Economist Reviews 

For years, I have held The Economist in high regard, mistakenly.
I purchased an annual membership; paper and digital.
23/10/24 - Update. Does anyone believe the platitude that The Economist has provided in their reply to me? How many times previously in response to criticisms have they provided exactly the same response without making any obvious improvements at all. Further evidence of bad faith.
At the end of the year, they did not inform me of a renewed subscription, they sneakily withdrew the funds from my Bank Account with out any notice whatsoever.
I went into chat to request a refund and goodness me! You cannot guess the shenanigans that went on with them to try and keep the funds. It was excruciating! It was like trying to pry cash from a dead man's grip. They offered me offer after offer and each time I had to remind the person at the end of the chat that I wanted to cancel again, and again, and for me never to contact them ever again. What a horrible experience that I think lasted for at least half-an-hour! It was such a horrible experience that I will never use The Economist again. What a grimy, slimy, disreputable attitude from an organization that you thought that you can trust.

Just a quick update that 'The Economist' reached out to ask for my contact details:
Hi XXXXX,
You’ve written a review for The Economist, and they’ve asked for more details to better understand your experience.
If you provide some extra information within 3 days, it’ll help them recognize your experience and respond.
Hmmmm, I really do not trust them.

If "the bringer of death" were a cancellation process.
Or how a cancellation process can mess up an otherwise fine relationship. Pathetic.

Deceptive Behaviour
The operator try to make offer that seems to be too good to be true in order to keep the subscription renewed. At the end of the process the charge is still $65.65 which is more than the agreed value.

Had to go through customer service to cancel my trial and they wouldn't cancel until I had to hear all their offers to keep me locked in. I couldn't cancel the subscription through their website. Not worth it.

Awful subscription service. Beware of hefty auto renewal without notification and you can’t cancel it either. They just deduct the increased subscription price from your bank account without any email notification. Then one gets into a long debate with their customer service who avoids answering the question and keeps you locked in. It’s Kafkaesque.

They automatically renew your subscription even if you tell them not to. A fantastic newspaper ruined by terrible selling practices.

Really poor from a publication that should be above such tactics.

What's more, they are deliberately trying to get people to provide a lot of extra information on trustpilot so they can delete your review if they don't provide it. You have your low score for a reason on trustpilot, address the issues rather than trying to delete the feedback. Disgraceful.

Went onto my account to cancel. All going ok until it transferred me to customer chat. I suspect that this is an automated bot because at one point it just stuck with no replies coming through and then when I typed (as advised in other reviews) "I refuse all offers. Please cancel.", it kicked into life and then eventually cancelled my subscription. A simple online request to cancel should not take 20 minutes.

Like many others, I'm unable to unsubscribe from their service. Their website has no option, and you're forced to interact with a chatbot that refuses to cancel your membership. I had to cancel the payment through my bank, which was a task in itself. Although I've enjoyed the content from The Economist, the cancellation process has led me to view them as a corrupt and pseudo-illegal company. Buyer beware!

Ridiculous cancelation process!
I'm in general a fan of the magazine but will never buy it again just because of them making it super hard to cancel. You can't do it through the app, need to login on the browser, find it in the menu, answer a few questions and the you still have to chat to a real person and wait for them to do it.

An ugly, gratuitously Left-biased rag of online journalism. Cannot seem to rid myself of its presence. This specific article take HUGE creative freedoms in their dispersal of "news" trends. Horrible, biased, slanders at times and Google needs to monitor the Economist closer.

I can't believe that they are making it SO awful.

When writing to their live chat agent, use the phrase below to save some time:

'I decline all offers. Cancel my subscription immediately and confirm cancellation.'

A once great and objective publication now makes little attempt to hide it's increasingly left political leanings. Had a subscription for several years but will no longer support them and their bias

I hate the way subscriptions to this magazine are sold. You have to take an annual subscription which automatically rolls over at the highest price despite there being enormous discounts if you cancel, or threaten to cancel, and renew. I was offered a 50% discount in advance at my next renewal when I threatened to cancel. When renewal came I was contacted by The Economist to say that my card was out of date. I entered new card details and emailed them to let them know they could process the renewal. This was ignored and instead they cancelled the subscription. When I contacted them they said that the 50% discount was no longer available. This seems to be a way of their sales people meeting their targets. I’m never subscribing again while it is sold like this. It’s a great magazine sold in the most unethical manner

I haven't received The Economist magazine in three weeks. When I went to find out why, I was told I had two courses of pursuit: phone or chat. I chose chat because It's all out there to see. No, he said, she said.
The problem is that they never checked or asked what my subscription date was. If I am current, and I am, then there is a problem with the delivery system. But instead, they (The Economist) routed me to a credit card, which can cost me an additional $55/month if I forget to cancel.

The Economist should be concerned because an annual subscription is $319.00 and will only go higher. If it is too inconvenient or too complex a problem to solve, subscribers will go to other publishers.

The problem could also be at the UPS distribution center.

Never expected the economist to make the cancellation process so intentionally difficult.

Awful process for cancelling subscription. Despite saying I was not interested in any other offers or questions and just wanted to cancel my subscription the questions just kept coming. This made it feel like a fraud and not the world renown newspaper it should be.

The articles are surely worthy - but it will take you 30 minutes of digital admin to unsubscribe from anything.

Your cancellation process is beyond terrible. It's certainly in bad faith, and the runaround you gave me felt a lot like extortion.

My experience with your chatbot / customer servie officer was stressful and a total waste of my time.

The magic word was "I decline all offers" whereupon the person, or bot?, finally confirmed my cancellation. Despite enjoying the Economist I will not be renewing.

Please, Economist, review this as your journalism is great and this really lets you down.

I am very disappointed by the experience I had cancelling my economist subscription. For such a high end publication, the process was incredibly laborious taking over twenty minutes- a lot longer than the one minute to sign up. At one point it was almost as if the agent was annoyed at me for not understanding how good an offer he was making- no need for that sort of conduct. Competitors like the New York Times handle this far, far better. I’ll be a lot warier of subscribing in future if this is how difficult it is to cancel.

I signed up for a free trial to check out the publication. As per usual, I avoid sticky conditions like having to cancel a certain amount of time before renewal in order to avoid unagreed charges. The unsubscribing process was *much* more difficult from signing up and deceptive in seeming to indicate the subscription had been cancelled when it had not been. When I did manage to get them to cancel the subscription, they immediately cancelled the "free trial" too. Most conveniently (irony), the options to download or email the chat transcript didn't work: fortunately I had copied it all before closing the chat. I kept a copy but can't copy it in here for some reason.